Instructions: Tapioca-coconut pudding combinations beloved in Asia, By Kasma Loha-Unchit

Traditional wisdom in the Orient tells us to eat foods in accordance with the elements of the season to stay healthy. In the hot season, we eat milder and lighter foods, such as clear soups, oil-less sour salads and leafy greens, and drink cooling teas such as those made from chrysanthemum flowers and pennywort leaves. In the cool season, our diet shifts to richer and spicier foods such as curries, coconut soups and creamy coconut custards and puddings.

Among the puddings I loved as a child are those made with tapioca pearls swimming in a warm coconut milk soup. They sometimes contain other flavor and texture elements such as starchy black beans or barley, crunchy water chestnuts, smooth creamy strips of young coconut meat, chewy sticky rice or sweet corn kernels. These puddings are nutritious, easy to digest and relatively light compared with dairy-based Western desserts.

In most of Asia, tapioca pearls and the puddings made from them are called sagu, sago or sakoo, derived from a Malayan word for the sagu (pronounced SAH-koo) palm tree (Metroxylon sagu).

The 12- to 17-foot tree, in the same family as the coconut palm, grows in swampy areas of tropical Asia. It lives for about 15 years, after which it dies standing. During its decline, a shoot sprouts from the underground root to produce a new tree.

Since ancient times, Indonesians have used the dense starchy core of the dead sagu palms trunk for food. The starch is made into small pellets, which are dried in the sun so that they will keep until needed. They are cooked into both savory and sweet dishes. Often the starch is cooked into a thick porridge and mixed with sweetened coconut milk.

Before rice cultivation was introduced in the 15 th century, sagu was an important staple carbohydrate food on many of the islands in the Indonesian archipelago. Even today, the southeastern islands of the chain continue to rely on it, especially during seasons when rice yields are insufficient.

A full-grown tree can yield as much as 800 pounds of starch for consumption.

It is believed that sagu as a food has been around for more than 1,000 years.

In his explorations of the Spice Islands, Marco Polo encountered and sampled it.

In the booming international maritime trade of the 18 th century, sagu was a prized commodity, favored especially by Chinese merchants. Western merchants took it home, where sagu pudding soon became a popular dessert.

Though sagu palm starch is still used to make puddings, it has been replaced in much of Southeast Asia by the starch from the manioc or cassava root, which takes much less time to mature and is easier to harvest. Most of the tapioca pearls available in the United States today are made from the latter.

In Southeast Asian markets, you can buy the pellets in different sizes and in white, light green or purplish pink. The colors are natural - the green from the fragrant juice extract of pandanus leaf and the pink from the lovely purple flower of a tropical vine called anchan. Occasionally, you might encounter a mixture of louder colors such as bright orange and red, which are from chemical dyes.

Kasma Loha-unchit teaches Thai cooking in Oakland. She may be reached through

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